The lull in facts this week has been regrettably unavoidable as this has been a feverish week of activity for The Comtesse. She is heading overseas tomorrow and will be away until April 20th. She will try to keep the facts coming regularly while she’s away but you know how life can sometimes interfere with our best intentions. In the event her internet access is limited, please stay morbid until her return!
Today’s Severe Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Monty Atwater was a veteran of the 10th Mountain Division which utilized explosives to create strategic avalanches during World War II. After the war he was immediately hired to research and control avalanches at Alta, a ski resort in the middle of one of the most notoriously dangerous mountain chains in North America, Utah’s Wasatch, just east of Salt Lake City. Needless to say, working with avalanches is dangerous business, and Atwater did not manage to retire unscathed.
In the early 1950’s, during research at Berthoud Pass in Colorado with Dick Stillman, another avalanche hunter, the two began jumping on a slab to try to cut it loose with their skis. Suddenly, the heard a “Crrrrump!” and the slab broke. Stillman made it the safety of the trees, but Atwater got caught. Tumbled end over end, he was dragged over a sharp rock, got a sharp knock on the head, and ended up wrapped around a tree; he remembers only losing his temper and hitting the avalanche with his fists on the way down. The air temperature was ten below zero, and since Atwater was buried in snow, he figured that it must have been the cold that kept his legs from working. They looked straight, and he could wiggle his toes, she he wasn’t paralyzed. It was only later that he realized that one third of the way from his hip to his knee, his leg had been 70 percent severed, probably as he was dragged over the rock. Once he had come to rest, the snow had acted as both a good coagulant and an anesthetic; later, Atwater was told by his doctor that there was no other place on the human body where he could have sustained a cut that big and lived to tell about it.
The Full Monty
Culled from: The White Death: Tragedy and Heroism in an Avalanche Zone
Morbid Mirth Du Jour!
That’s me, all right!